Jay+Robnett's+LMF+Page

//Learning Motivation and Fun//
 As a science teacher, it is very hard for me to ignore the scientific method. So, before I watched any videos (other than the two I submitted, of course) I wanted to test a theory I had read about girls and boys and their different learning styles and motivations. This data base seemed to be the perfect way to test this. So for generalization number 1 I used a hypothesis: according to current common wisdom, girls favor more social interaction, cooperation and peer recognition, while boys tend to thrive in competitive environments with less competition and cooperation. Using the video search engine, I found there were 89 women who were the subject of a learning situation and 73 men. For each gender I cross reference for the following criteria: those who rated their activity "high" for interaction, cooperation, competition and social recognition. I expected to find more women who rated their activity "high" in the interaction, cooperation and socials recognition while more men would rate competition highly. The results I found were quite unexpected: 48% of women rated interaction high compared to 45% of men. 38% of women rated cooperation high compared to 37% of men. 24% of women rated social recognition high compared to 22% of men. Finally, 19% of women rated competition high compared to 19% of the men. It is very clear that while there are not enough numbers here to claim significance, the numbers are nearly identical. So much for gender differences.
 * Generalization #1:** Gender Differences.

I was surprised that so few of the individuals rated their activities "high" when it came to competition. Of the 31 (out of 162 submissions) only 12 listed their learning situations as "academic." As a former coach, I tend to crave competition for myself and try to set competition within my lessons in the classroom, with teams and rewards. Though most of the student seem to enjoy this, perhaps I will have to rethink this strategy. However, Jack, in his recollection of a tug of war lesson on the American Revolution and Grace in her recollection her learning to type experience show that competition can be very motivating for some people. It is unclear whether the others who rate their experiences low in competition were turned off by competition or just didn't do many competitive lessons.
 * Generalization #2:** Competition is not a highly sought aspect of academic learning situations

I wanted to know how important the use of humor is to create a memorable lesson. I was expecting to see lots of examples of funny teachers who made their students laugh with memorable, funny anecdotes. Instead, what I found is that most of the stories talked not about the teachers' humor but the humor of the situation or activity created by the lesson. The stories related by Kelley and Justin67 are great examples: each one describes a scenario set up by the teacher that allowed the students freedom to act out or role play something from the learning. This allowed creative interaction with their peers and resulted in a humorous, memorable lesson.
 * Generalization #3: Humor = Letting students act things out.**

In my analysis I found that most people selected "hobbies" as the content of their learning experience. From snowboarding to tango lessons, more people remembered significant lessons that were related to hobbies (75) than academic (66) or career (23). This makes sense in that people are always more motivated if they are in a lesson that they want to learn, which, of course is not always the case in academics or career. Also, I felt that in a hobby lesson there would probably be more small group learnings but this was not always the case. Many people reported that they were in large groups and still had memorable experiences. Two examples of this were Al, who talked about Tango lessons and Cathy who learned Magic in large groups. Also interesting is the fact that neither of these two people knew they would like the activity before they learned it, so the prior motivation factor goes out the window here. However, I'm sure we can quantify anything here because for each of them the activity itself struck a cord with them and became their hobby, that's why they remembered it. I'm sure there were also plenty of bored tango and magic learners in the same classes who chose to forget these lessons.
 * Generalization #4: Hobbies stimulate great learning situations.**

When I made my own video, I thought I would be an exception: my story focus on a school project that I did all by myself, not in a group. As teachers, we've been taught they students prefer groups. The interaction and competition stimulate learning more than individual lessons. Also, in my experience its more fun to teach to groups, especially high school students. So when I thought about my learning experience, I was surprised it was not a group project, I thought I was just anti-social. From the videos, though, it turns out I'm not alone: 40 different activities were related where the lesson was at least 80% controlled by self (80% self + 100% self). Ryan173 relates his experiences learning a new skate board trick and Arvick155 telling how she learned to dance show the deep introspection involved when students are involved in the lesson. I think we have to remember that groups are important, but introspection and self learning are as well. Einstein didn't "group-think" his way to the theory of relativity.
 * Generalization #5: Solo lessons can be rewarding, too!**